Final Blog

Though this semester got an unorthodox start, through no one's fault no one knew what was in store for this online class. But quickly we fell into our assignments, reading and paper, and of course, this Blog. This blog has provided a casual platform for me to comment and explore the readings without the pressure of writing a whole formal paper on them. I was able to think in a less structured way. When able to think and write this way it made it easier to learn from the readings and the styles the writers used then take that into my own writing.

Though I learned something from all the readings and the writers themselves, one that resonated with me the most was “The Art of Composition” essay by Mark Twain. I, like many, believe that Mark Twain was one of the great writers of  American Literature and that endless knowledge can come from his writing. This essay directly tells the reader how to improve their writing. And that is by reading, reading and studying other writers style, I can hone my skills by reading things like this Essay, creating a bigger stash of sentences, structure, vocabulary until writing can flow naturally.

“Shitty First Drafts” by Anne Lamott was another reading that I could relate to and learn from. I know that the more drafts I make the more I read and edit my work, the better it gets. Lamott reminded me that in the wake of writing 5 papers for this class it would be daunting and at times stressful, but much easier to take on when you start each with a first draft.  

In ending my time in this online class and this blog, I think it important to note that I feel my writing has improved with each paper I have written and each reading I have explored. My understanding of rhetoric, styles and strategies has deepened and I have become a better writer and student.

Thank you to my Professor, my peers whom I edited with and of course the many writers who have and continue to provide me with knowledge in and out of school.
~Alli

Satire and Swift

Jonathan Swift was a master of satire. I remember noting that to myself when I first read “Gulliver’s Travels”. To this point I was not aware that Swift also wrote such disturbing satirical dialogue about the poverty and devastation of his country. This being “Modest Proposal” written as a proposal of a concerned citizen. Witnessing the starvation of his people, he devises a plan. He takes the reader through his process, that he sees the starving families, that keep breeding. That there are so many young children, that cannot contribute to the country in any way yet, he finds a way for them to contribute. He then proposes that (prepare yourself), they should eat the babies, and make a market of them. (That was hard just to write). I found my jaw dropping and my hand flying to cover my mouth as I read this proposal, but Swift flawlessly maintains a tone throughout the proposal, keeping it straightforward and factual. One could start to agree with the points he makes as he presents them unemotional and as a plainly concerned member of this country. To this citizen it is an obvious solution almost staring at them in the face. He keeps the tone and drops all ethics, truly  he doesn’t give ethics any thought.

What you can take away from this bone chilling satire, is the skill that Swift has mastered in tone and attitude. He keeps it consistent throughout despite that it is not real, and does not actually support this proposal. When one is writing a satire, jumping to the extreme of one argument can open a reader's eyes to the other argument. That is the benefit of political satire, to show how ludicrous the other argument is.

Shitty First Drafts

             Whenever writing a paper, writing a first draft is paramount. Many writers will write their paper, do slight editing and be done. But when you write in drafts you are able to edit and rewrite drafts until you have an ultimate. Anne Lamott Introduces this as the idea of shitty first drafts. That even the best writers write shitty first drafts to begin the writing process.
            Every writer can learn from writing more and more shitty first drafts, be it a short story, an essay or a blog post.
            Lamott reminds the writer of the pressure that you feel when sitting down to start writing. It can be daunting to think of the 20 pages you need to begin-but if you take out the pressure that it needs to be good, you can just write and let it flow, it may be shitty, but its only the first draft.

To you, the writer From, Mark Twain

Any writer is constantly trying to improve their "skill with the quill" as it were. There is no place better to gain writing knowledge than from the great writers themselves. Mark twain is not stranger to composition and his Essay, "The Art of Composition" can teach one how to sharpen their skills to be as effortlessly eloquent as Twain.

Mark Twain stresses the “unconscious powers of mind” that begin working when one begins writing. Mark twain writes “leisurely” and it flows naturally from within him. He can't pin down his methods in his mind when he starts writing. He knows they are there but they are not neatly organized and compartmentalized. Still what seems like chaos in the mind leads to an ease of style when writing.

Twain has come up with the idea of the “model chamber” sort of a stash of sentences we have in our mind compiled of every sentence we’ve read. The model chamber is what shapes one's instructional writing. The model chamber is made as we reject uncomfortable sentences, for whatever reason we might find them offensive, and as we accept ones we do like. Twain explains that this process of selection or rejection is done through an other unconscious marvel of the mind; the idea of the“Automatically working taste”. We don't need to consciously say “I like this sentences I’ll put it in my model chamber or I don't like this one-I’ll forget about it”, our mind automatically rejects or accepts them into the model chamber.

What a writer needs to know writing improves and is shaped by all of one's exposure to composition. The more you read and the more you practice writing the better your instinctual writing will be. Our conscious only comes in when editing. In this, reading is ESSENTIAL to being a good writer.

• Twain, Mark, "The Art of Composition"  Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Prose Models 11th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 1975. 

If one was to compare and contrast the ideas presented by Alan Dershowitz in “The case for Medicalizing Heroin” and those in Charles Rangel’s “Legalize Drugs? Not On Your Life”, it would be easy to mistake these for a debate from today. These arguments, despite being written in the 1980’s are still valid in today’s society. It is a daily question of our government of legalizing and medicalizing drugs such as marijuana and also decriminalizing or legalizing harder drugs like heroin or crack-cocaine. The opposing view points of these two men are offered to the reader in a variety of appeals.  Dershowitz offers a logical argument for legalizing drugs. Supported both by fact and opinion. He offers to the reader the benefits of not only the society and economy but the addicts themselves. There would be less victims of drug abuse, and less victims of the unintentional side i.e. those who are infected with HIV/AIDS. He uses the argument that is most commonly used today of comparing drugs to alcohol and tobacco. That alcohol has proven to be as dangerous if not more than drugs and we’ve legalized those. We have also seen what happens when we outlaw them.  Rangel is against the legalization of drugs, his argument is presented by questions posed to the reader to prove the adverse or catastrophic consequences that would come of legalizing drugs. He takes us through all of the ramifications of legalization and swiftly rebutted the arguments for it.

These two men use logical and ethical appeals to argue their opposing views of drug legalization. Both could be looked at today almost 30 years later and apply their ideas to today’s society.

• Dershowitz. Alan, "The Case for Medicalizing Heroin" from Contrary to Popular Opinion. 1992. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Prose Models 11th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 1975. 
• Rangel Charles. "Legalize Drugs? Not on Your Life" from The New York Times. 1988. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Prose Models 11th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 1975. 

ANONYMOUS: Who Am I?

This open ended letter, written by an unknown author is meant to inform the reader of the native people, the Mestizos. It is to inform the reader of the lifetime struggles of this group of people. They addresses the reader as the attacker, and themselves; the victim. They are speaking as the whole group and the readers are those who have caused them so much pain and suffering; those who do not act, those who's ancestors took their land and those who still treat them with disdain. "You took away our lands...you are ashamed of what we are, and your attitude makes us feel that we, too, should be ashamed of what we are." The writer is informing the world of this unknown people that we are all treating poorly, our ancestors have treated poorly and persuade them to take action, to pull them out of the terrible life that we have allowed them to fall into.

• Levin, Gerald. "Who Am I?". Prose Models 11th ed. Harcourt College Publishers, 1975. 
• Anonymous, "Who Am I?" from Educating the Mexican American by Henry Sioux Johnson and William J. Hernandez. Valley Forge; Judson Press, 1970. Reprinted with permission of the publisher. 

"Homeless" "I think I will Not Forget This"

Persuading someone to change their opinion can be an odious task. Persuading an entire society to change their view of something is an extreme. Anna Quindlen could convince  anyone to change their view of the homeless through  her imagery  and personal anecdotes in an essay she wrote for the Times. It seems every paragraph of thought is clipped with a statement that one reads and rereads, feeling its weight and its true meaning. She talks about a homeless woman, Ann, and the pictures she carries of the home she used to have, “She was not adrift, alone, anonymous,although her bags and raincoat with the grime shadowing its creases had made me believe she was. She had a house, or at least once upon a time she had had one. Inside were curtains, a couch, a stove, potholders. You are where you live. She was somebody.” Quindlen admits to what the Global view of a homeless woman like Ann is; “adrift” “anonymous. But the idea of the Homeless stems from the idea of “home” itself- it is all of that stuff inside, potholders couches and the life you have inside that house. Ann, and countless other homeless people, have had a life and that’s who they are. Quindlen drives home this idea of the things that make up a life together by applying them to Ann and others without homes. “Here is a woman without a bureau. There is a man with no mirror, no wall to hang it on. They are not the homeless. They are people without homes...No window to look out upon the world. My God. That is everything”. This final statement encompasses everything Anna Quindlen wants the reader to feel; these are individual people, who do not have the simple things that make you who you are.

Hilary De Vries uses similar appeals to make her argument in “I Think I will Not Forget This”. Both women use powerful strategies to make the reader reject the ideas they have of homeless people. To change their lenses completely and put a personality and a face to them. De Vries sets out to do this, she makes it clear that she is out to personalize such a huge social problem. In her essay De Vries, narrates her time in a shelter, taking the reader through what she sees, not offering her own feelings. This allows the reader to experience the shelter and draw their own ideas about how they live.

De Vries offers her first personal thought, when the women are getting ready for bed “It is almost like being back in gym class, I think. But it isn't. It isn't school. It isn't even a home. And i still wonder how people can live like this.”  A woman in the shelter says to Hilary “everyone here is different. Everyone here is an individual”.  This is what Hilary De Vries will never forget and what she wants the reader to never forget, “compassion is not limited to those who can write checks”. Both Anna Quindlen and Hilary De Vries attempt to change the lenses with which the world views those without a home. This reader believes that both women were successful.

"Mortality" and "Tumorville"

“I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death.”

Though hearing this from a passing person, one might believe that this is an over dramatic statement. That to feel like death is something no one can say they have felt;not while living. But Hitchen’s explores, in his personal memoir Mortality, the feeling of dying. Not the last moment of breath, but the long and drawn out experience of death taking over your body.

A Very dark read Hitchens does not sugar coat the feeling of waking up and not being able to live, to get up, to move, to breath is all too much. He does not lighten the subject of death but shows us what he went through and his, possibly unorthodox, way of dealing with it. He familiarizes the reader with the stage theory of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross which is the process of moving from denial to anger to depression and acceptance. A common theory amongst grievers and often a simplified way of dealing with one's heavy emotions. Hitchens tells the reader how he did not go through these stages as one would when dealing with the grief of cancer- but that he was in denial for most of it and skipped over anger because he did not feel it would do him good.  He talks about how he dealt with his cancer by not dealing with it, he did not stop his work, but did 2 shows in one night, “This is what citizens of sick country do while they are still hopelessly clinging to their old domicile.” He felt as though he waded in a stage of oppression, “Instead, I am badly oppressed by the gnawing sense of waste”. He is only bothered by the fact that he is a life wasted. His dissonance is felt by the reader as he talks about the life he had planned to have.

Another source of discomfort for the reader is the lasting comparison throughout of cancer and the sick being “citizens” of their own country. That they are in a world all their own. He calls it “Tumorville” in once sentence. They have a language their own, their own culture and ways.  He shows the reader that unless you have been through cancer, or another life threatening series of sickness, it is a country you’ve never visited-you can never know what it is truly like.

Hitchens ends this stretch of Mortality with a truly upsetting question and answer. It is often shown that when someone has a terminal disease they ask “Why me?” Hitchens call thinks this is pointless, “To the dumb question ‘Why me?’ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply; Why not?” It is painfully true to many, that there is no rhyme or reason why they get sick, the world just allows it.


Hitchens, Christopher. "Excerpt." Mortality. New York: Twelve, 2012. N. pag.Twelve/Hachette Book Group. Web. 18 Oct. 2016

Biographies; past and present

Biographies are the telling of a person’s whole story, and memoirs are the little stories within that make up a life. A cumulative example of a memoir is The Glass Castle: A memoir by Jeannette Walls. The memoir is about Walls’ childhood and into adulthood, focusing on her parents and siblings and the unique way in which they live. Walls ‘ style of delivery is that of herself experiencing the unusual events of her childhood. She describes them as though still a child, she does not add what her adult self thinks or feels, so the reader is always able to create their own feelings on the events as if watching them happen.

Readers can hardly put the book down, because they want to read what they family will do next, what will happen to Jeanette and what her reaction will be. It is gripping and interesting, while also being a true story. A different approach to keeping the reader interested can be seen in Eudora Welty’s "One Writers Beginning's". Welty’s style follows a more ‘structured’ approach by telling you a sequence of events. She keeps the reader interested in her feelings as she is experiencing the situation. That is what you’re interest falls to; the opinions and feelings not the actual events.

Frederick Douglass in his first chapter of his autobiography, reveals much about himself. He reveals how little he actually knows about himself. Knowledge that we, today, would find almost instinctual; who are parents are, and how old we are. In today's world, a birthday is a right and something we all have; our day. But Frederick Douglass did not know his own. Frederick Douglass knows more about Frederick Douglass than any other writer, but his style is that of ignorance- he simply presents that he is not sure of exact dates or people (his birthday or father). Similar to Jeannette Walls, he presents it all as factual information, not his own feelings on the truly terrible childhood he experience. When he does offer up an opinion, it is stated as a guess of sorts. For example he talks about why he was taken away from his mother at a young age, “Frequently, before the child has reached its twelfth month, its mother is taken from it, and hired out on some farm a considerable distance off, and the child is placed under the care of an old woman, too old for field labor. For what this separation is done, I do not know, unless it be to hinder the development of the child's affection toward its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result.” Douglass can not say why they do this, but he recognizes the result.

Frederick Douglass takes a different approach to telling his story than do many other modern autobiographers. Most self written stories function as memoirs, talking about what is relevant or interesting, and jumping from story to story. These memoirs often stand to give the reader not only the events, but how the writer reacted and felt. What they took from the experience and how it lead to other events in their life. This is a contrast to the factual delivery of Frederick Douglass.

Douglass, Frederick. NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF. Boston. 1845 Project Gutenberg, Web. 12 Oct. 2016

An Ascent of Realizations

             Petrarch's telling of his Ascent of Mount Ventoux  is a meaningful narrative, that on the surface was the author's journey climbing Mount Ventoux, and telling his father of this journey. As you read about his ascent though, he lets the reader, his father, in on his thoughts that relate to the events he is in. I think, even if one hasn't been to the top of Mount Ventoux, the feeling of being on top of the world and realizing things about your own life is something many can relate to. Any time you are in a historical location you feel a connection to that time and the people who were there. The author realizes that it seemed a mystical mountain when you think about it in ancient times, but it becomes human when you are there in the present. The author feels as though it is underwhelming. Seeing things from the past and trying to seeing how they fit into your own life; looking at something that ancient civilizations saw and realizing it is the same, they are the same as you.

             What I think is important to highlight is that the author is speaking to his father, taking him through his journey and reflections. He ends by asking his father to pray for him; “and I beseech you, in turn, to pray that these vague and wandering thoughts of mine may sometime become firmly fixed, and, ...may direct themselves at last toward the single, true, certain, and everlasting good.” He acknowledges that he is having all of these consequential ideas, but hopes he can turn them into broad lessons for many others. I think this is something we all hope for ; To leave an everlasting impression on the world and to do, in our short time, something good.

               This story follows the criteria of a narrative. It is a story of the author climbing a mountain and also the thoughts and realizations he has on his journey. The author has structured this essay as a letter to his father. Is is read very similar to a detailed journal entry. Beginning with his motivation and why he wanted to climb the mountain in the first place. His preparation, focusing on who he will climb with. In each paragraph he makes a point to share a thought he had with that coincides with the event taking place such as with finding a climbing companion, he realizes “so rarely do we meet with just the right combination of personal tastes and characteristics,even among those who are dearest to us.”  As a narrative often does, this essay follows the important life event of this author. He uses this event to find the deeper, important meanings of life.

Petrarch, Fransesco. The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. Digital image. Medieval Sourcebook: Petrarch: The Ascent of Mount Ventoux. Internet Medieval Source Book, 28 Aug. 09. Web. 1 Oct. 16.

Eudora Welty

One Writer's Beginnings

A Narration shows the change in people, places, things through experiences and events. Narration takes a reader on a journey. Eudora Welty’s Narration “One Writer's Beginnings” takes you through her childhood trip north to her parents hometowns. Her descriptions of her mother, their car and the things they say, take the reader back to a different time and place. Welty’s story is a narration taking through the experience and reveals to the reader things about Eudora and her family. Her mother's qualities remain unchanging through the story.  Welty says she never gives into the pleasure of the trip  and keeps her proper, motherly composure the whole trip.

John Mcphee The World's Largest Pile of Tires

   I chose to read John Mcphee’s “The World’s Largest Pile of Tires” from “Irons in the Fire”. I have to state that upon reading the title, I was intrigued on what it could be about, to my amusement, it was in fact an environmental piece about a pile of tires. The author begins immediately by giving the reader a visual that it is so big, it is almost visible from the Interstate 5 in California (off the bat I can tell this is written for Californians).  The first paragraph paints a vivid picture of the tire mountain to the reader. Similes and metaphors such as “the individual tires appear to be grains of black sand” (p85), are used to take the reader from seeing one tire, and how they pile up and up to be one whole mountain. Mcphee also highlights the many things you can see from the tire pile, that you can look in one direction and see 100 miles to the Sierra..close to them you walk in tire canyons”. One feels as though it is a land all its own, eroded from the tires. Mcphee begins his transition to talking about the environmental impact of all these tires, by  next talking about how they got there and how no one could pinpoint how many there were, that geologists even tire experts topographically couldn't size this mountain and calculate how many there were.

The final paragraph is one where it gets away from the tire pile itself, into the environmental impact. The deeper meaning of this pile is that, its tires, something we all use, we are all responsible for, “They are everybody’s tires. They are Environmental Defense funds tires, Rainforest Action Network tires... They are California's Natural Resources Federation tires...No one in innocent of scrapping those tires.” Mcphee lists 10 national, local, and federal environmental groups who are equally responsible for the tires being in the pile they are in. This leads him into stating his main idea, “Of the problem the tire pile represents, everybody is the cause and the problem, like the pile, has been increasing.”

Mcphee ends his description of  the tires and their meaning with highlighting irony. The irony that these tires are so hard to dispose of because of how good they are at being tires. Everything about how a tire is made, to be safe and indestructible, makes it near impossible to safely dispose of “When they are thrown away, they are just as tough as they were when they felt Kick One”. Mcphee doesn’t offer a solution to the problem of the tire pile at the end of this selection, but instead his delve into the tire pile, how vast it is, how impossible it could be to destroy, how it is our responsibility that it is there, only leaves the reader in thought.

Mcphee, John. ""The World's Largest Pile of Tires"" Prose Models. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978. N. pag. Print.